Sublime Forum

Jumbled characters

#1

I’m working with files in Sublime Text (I’m not the writer, just reviewing the text), and the files I’ve received have jumbled characters in a few lines (screenshot attached).

2022-09-13
2022-09-13.png974×228 34.8 KB

The writer has told me this isn’t a problem on their end, but that there’s a formatting or import error I’m introducing on my end. I’ve been told I should be working in UTF-8, no BOM. Thing is, all I did was download their file and open it in Sublime (I never touch default settings or change file formats)–and as far as I can tell, I am working in UTF-8, no BOM. Every other file I’ve gotten from them has worked perfectly with this method, so I can’t tell how I might have introduced an error this time.

I’ve tried reopening with encoding in UTF-8 and saving with encoding in UTF-8, no BOM, but the jumbled characters invariably appear. Since I seem to be doing something wrong on my end to make this happen, could you help me understand how to fix this error?

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#2

Does the author have a screenshot of what this section of text looks like for them?

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#3

I haven’t been sent those, but I’m assuming they are formatted in legible lines on their end. I’m sorry if that’s not helpful!

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#4

I’ve been informed that this might be an intentional choice by the writer to use something called Zalgo text to purposely make the text look like this for the reader in places, so maybe that’s what’s going on.

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#5

Indeed; that’s why I asked if the author had provided a screenshot of what they intended it to look like. Based on the content of the text there’s a bit of a “horror” vibe and text styled like this fits into that genre quite well.

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#6

That makes sense then. I had never heard of that and assumed it was an error. Thank you for your time!

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